7/31/2019 Sb Transportation

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sb-transportation 1/4

RFID for TransportationImprove Airline Baggage Handlingand Customer Experience with RFID

Maybe this has happened to you: You’re waiting or your bag at thebaggage claim, having just own in. The crowd thins as passengersrecover their bags and trundle o to vacations, waiting amily andbusiness meetings. Eventually only a ew bags remain, and none othem is yours. You check, again, to make sure this is the right claimarea. Suddenly the carousel stops. An airport worker appears and starts

to remove the unclaimed bags rom the carousel. Your bag is gone.“Fill out this orm. We’ll call you i it turns up,” says the harried clerk inthe lost baggage ofce.

The next time you are standing in line at the airport,

look around you. One out o every 20 people you see

will lose bags that day. Thirty-fve million bags were

mishandled last year, with an average cost per bag o

$90 to the airline industry. Passenger claims or cash

compensation total over $1.2B per year.  This says

nothing about the inconvenience and lost satisaction

or travelers, whose business trips and amily vacationsare ruined.

A Complex and Growing Problem

The problem is growing. In the last 5 years, the number

o lost bags has increased by 75%. This is due in part

to the increased complexity o baggage handling.

Growing security concerns have led to a process that

can involve 5 to 7 separate handos on a 2-leg ight:2 

1. Passenger to Airline ticket counter2. Airline ticket counter to airport system

3. Airport baggage system to security agency

4. Security agency to airport baggage system

5. Airport baggage system to airline

6. Tail to Tail transer on the tarmac

7. Airline to passenger at baggage claim

Many bags are mishandled due to the limitations o

barcode-based baggage handling systems. According

to an analysis by the International Airline Travel

Association (IATA), about 10% o all mishandled bagsare caused by bad barcode reads. Another 11% are

attributed to missing baggage sortation messages

(BSMs) which tell handlers where the bag is going.

Both o these issues can be addressed directly by

RFID. The remainder, which includes human error, late

arrival and other mishaps can be indirectly improved

through more comprehensive tracking enabled by

RFID.

1 International Air Transport Association (IATA), 2 Quatrotec

7/31/2019 Sb Transportation

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sb-transportation 2/4

7/31/2019 Sb Transportation

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sb-transportation 3/4

RFID for Transportation

Improve Airline Baggage Handling

and Customer Experience with RFID

Alien has introduced a new technology called IntelligentTag Radar™, or ITR™ to address this issue. ITR enables

Alien Enterprise Readers like the ALR-9900 to isolate

individual tags reliably and maintain the accurate order

o tags moving on a conveyor belt without additional

shielding or special equipment. System throughput

and ROI is preserved. Alien’s subsidiary company

Quatrotec, having expertise in the airport security

system market, is using ITR sotware in its RFID-

enabled conveyor appliance being evaluated now by

airports and material handling partners.

The ecosystem or Gen 2 RFID is robust and mature.

Industry standards like EPC Gen 2 and ISO 18000-6cdeliver a high level o interoperability, which in turn

has created a broad ecosystem o vendors that

supply labels, encapsulated tags, readers, handhelds,

sotware, printers and other related products. Among

these are label converters, who assemble a huge

variety o labels and tags using RFID inlays produced by

companies like Alien.

Inserting RFID inlays in baggage tags introduced

challenges early on or converters. Difculty in inserting

4-inch-long inlays increased costs, while other inlay

orm actors were more expensive and provided lowerperormance. Only when converters such as George

Schmitt & Co. mastered the insertion o industry

standard inlays like the Alien Squiggle® in baggage

tags was it possible to achieve the low cost and high

perormance required or bag tags.

8 Alien, 9 IDTechEx, “RFID in Airports and Airline, 2008-2018”, 2008,

standard now deliver over fve times the range oearlier tags, resulting in signifcantly higher read rates,

even on difcult materials.

While tag perormance has improved, cost has dropped

by 70%8 and continues to decline. According to

IDTechEx, the cost o bag tags will decline by about

75% over the next decade.9 

Reader capability has improved as well. Until recently

RFID perormance was limited by the ability to discern

individual, ast-moving tags on baggage conveyors.

Random orientation and spacing o the bags made it

necessary to artifcially increase the gaps between bags

to ensure that the system could individually identiy

RFID tags as they moved past the antenna. This orced

users to reduce system throughput, with negative

impact on ROI.

Alien ALR-9900 Enterprise Reader

Alien Squiggle®

7/31/2019 Sb Transportation

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sb-transportation 4/4

Copyright © 2008 Alien Technology Corporation. All rights reserved.

Alien, Alien Technology, and the Alien Technology logo are trademarks

or registered trademarks o Alien Technology Corporation in the

U.S. and other countries. Other trademarks are the property o their

respective owners.

Alien Technology

18220 Butterfeld Blvd.

Morgan Hill, CA 95037

866-RFID NOW

www.alientechnology.com

April 2008

The Promise for Airline Baggage Handling & RFID

Early RFID experimentation on baggage started in

1991, and made little progress until 2005, when

IATA issued standards or requency, data ormat

and other variables. Since then over 20 airports have

implemented some orm o RFID, with high-profle pilot

projects at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas and Hong

Kong International Airport10.

In 2007, IATA recently issued its “RFID Transition

Plan or Baggage,” which provides a roadmap or the

implementation o RFID across 80 top airports in 5–6

years. The plan projects these results:11 

› 80 airports covering 80% o mishandled baggage

› Savings o $200M per year ater ull implementation

› Full implementation in 5–6 years

› Payback in 2–3 years

According to IDTechEx, by 2012, over 1 billion pieces

o passenger luggage will be tagged every year, and

airports will spend almost $100M annually on baggage

tags. By 2017 this will reach 2 billion units, and RFID-

enabled baggage tags will cost less than 5¢12

. AlienTechnology and Quatrotec will provide readers, tags

and services to support this growing market.

So the next time you wait or your baggage at the

airport, think about how RFID can be o help to you,

your customers and your partners. Imagine a world

where lost baggage is rare and the airlines can tell you

where your bag is all the time.

Companies and organizations mentioned in this article

› Alien Technology http://www.alientechnology.com/ 

› Quatrotec http://www.quatrotec.com/ 

› International Air Transport Association http://www.

iata.org/index.htm

› IDTechEx http://www.idtechex.com/ 

Alien products mentioned in this article

› ALR-9900 Enterprise RFID Reader

› Squiggle Gen 2 Tag with Higgs Gen 2 RFID IC

› Intelligent Tag Radar technology or tag singulation

RFID for Transportation

Improve Airline Baggage Handling

and Customer Experience with RFID

10, 12 IDTechEx, “RFID in Airports and Airline, 2008-2018”, 2008, 11 IATA